I always am ashamed to tell people that I love The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. This is all mainly due to the title of the movie. 9/10 when I tell someone about this movie, they snicker when I tell them the title. However, the only redeeming quality is that I only recommend the movie to people that I would think the movie would be a therapeutic experience. So, after they have seen it, the scoffing ceases and they join me in being a fan of the film.

At the risk of coming off like a Struggling Background Artist, I'll say this:

I honestly don't get embrassed by films I like. I am the only film fan amongst my friends (although they do try films from a roudn the world and are by no means Multi-plex only viewers) and therefore I get a lot of stick for liking certain films. But I learnt a long time ago not to lie about what films I like.

If I should be embrassed about it, it means it's a film I thought I was going to hate and ended up loving.

Most recently this happened with ENCHANTED - a film I love! I thought it was great - but when I first saw the trailer I was like "paaaarp!" - no thanks!

Grease 2 is a movie I try not to mention when I discuss favorite movies. I mean, I know it's not a good movie, but I can watch it repeatedly and never get tired of it. I guess I saw it at the right age when I was a kid and it just stuck with me.

Reproduction! Reproduction!Hope he's proud of what he's done.Reproduction! Reproduction!He was only pokin' fun.Reproduction!See what happens when a boy and girlDon't know how to play it safe?

I didn't have the endurance to go through the whole thread to see if someone else mentioned this but Raise your Voice holds a special place in my heart. I talked about this a bit in the new zoners thread.
Best things about the movie:

1. Hillary Duff's insistence on bunching her shoulders up every time she "cries" (i.e scrunching her face up like she just bit a lemon) And trust me, she cries a lot.

2. The fact that they are at the most prestigious music school in the country and yet their final performances are either cookie cutter pop numbers or bizarre hip hop/techno creations (SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOOOW) If you've seen it I hope you found that bit as funny as i did.

3. The rebellious music teacher who feels, to distance himself from his fellow uptight teachers, he must break out into an indulgent cello jazz solo during a classical number. Then precede to throw his cello on the ground and kick his chair over. Before running his hands through his head and walking off stage.

4. Hillary's confident, no-nonsense black roommate who is just 'trying to support her family' and is 'there for the scholarship'. Guess who wins it? Thats right! Because she deserves it (cue patronizing clapping)

5. The student's strange ability to break into completely improvised pop numbers while hanging out on the lawn. all it takes is one chunky groove before every single instrument known to man is pulled out and played to perfection. And somehow in this chaos, you can clearly hear Hillary's wispy studio-perfected voice.

Maybe that was a bit much, and it may sound like I'm criticizing the film. Trust me, it's all done with such stupidity its endearing. only bad part is the stupid gelled british love interest who plays the same character in all 3 movies hes been in. Love that film, check it out.

Maybe it's because I speak French (thank you, French Immersion school in Ottawa), but I don't think of foreign movies as "foreign movies" so much as just movies. Even if I suggest we watch something like Taxi, most of the people around me just start treating me like a teh pretentious douchebag. Which is fair enough, because that's what I am, but still...

I usually just sit back and let other people choose the films these days. To be fair, I guess I do hang around with a lot of people with dyslexia/an aversion to the written word, so having to read subtitles must be a major drag for them.

I like this thread. Too bad I'm about to abuse it with this long and unnecessary fucking post.

There are some types of movies that are, well, they're special I guess. Movies that you watched as a child that you still retain fond memories of. I'm talking about your 3 Ninjas, your Surf Ninjas, your Lost Boys and your Super Mario Bros. I'm talking about Ernest Goes To Camp, Ernest Goes To Jail, and that ewok movie where the kids have to save their parents from a giant spider or some fucking thing. Movies that you watch on end and then go years without seeing. Then you watch them as an adult and you realize they're complete ass. I'm talking about your 3 Ninjas, your Surf Ninjas, your Lost Boys, Super Mario Bros., Ernest Goes To Lost Surf Ninja Boys Academy, etc. They're all crap, but you try to convince yourself that they're good because that's how you remember them. Now I'm about to drop two words on your ass and I don't think you're gonna like them. My generation doesn't want to hear what I'm about to say. I don't think they can handle it, what I'm dishing out. I'm gonna just come out and say it: The Goonies, man. I know everybody loves the fuckin Goonies, but we've got to face the truth. It's kind of a corny kid's movie, man. I love it like a son, man, but it's Cheese City. You can argue til you're blue in the face. It's all a lie. You're deluding yourself, man. Stop it. But at least Corey Haim wasn't in it. I'll give you that, bro.

The reason I brought up all that shit about crappy movies that only stupid kids like is because I decided to take a stroll down memory lane and watch one of those shitty movies. It's not one of the movies that I've already mentioned, so I don't know why I even brought those up. This has nothing to do with Ernest Goes To Jail or ewoks. It doesn't even have one ninja in it, let alone three. It does have a guy riding a log like a surfboard and going over a waterfall, though. So I guess it's kinda like Surf Ninjas, but without Leslie Nielsen.

At this point you're probably thinking, "That's crazy! Leslie Nielsen IS Surf Ninjas, motherfucker!" And you'd be right. This movie is nothing like Surf Ninjas.

Well, what I'm talking about is The Wrong Guys. That's the title of the movie I'm gonna review, so that's why I put it in italics. Just so we're all up to speed. Anyway, this is the kind of movie I was talking about earlier. The kind of low-budget movie from the late eighties that you watch when you're a kid and you like it and then you watch it again and you're like, "What the hell is this?" This movie isn't as shitty as 3/Surf Ninjas or Super Mario Bros. It's just a different kind of shitty. But it's a good kind, I think.

(You should've just skipped down to this part)

The story is pretty standard. A group of middle-aged former Cub Scouts decide to go on a camping trip to recapture their youth, finish what they started twenty years ago, make friends with the childhood bullies, troll for pussy, out-fox an escaped convict, etc. The movie starts off simply enough. They show the friends back in the day when they were bad child actors and there is a voice-over by the main character to introduce everybody. The child acting isn't very good. It's not a Dreamcatcher-level of shittiness though. (For the uninitiated: Dreamcatcher has some of the most annoying child actors I've ever seen. The blond kid uses a dramatic pause so the older kids will take him seriously. Instead he's a stupid asshole. Then the skinny kid with glasses snaps his fingers for emphasis. These kids are top notch.) Anyway, there is one genuine child actor in this movie and that is Jonathan Brandis, whom you probably know as the brave ALF kid from IT who stuttered like a douche, or the brave ALF kid with asthma from Sidekicks who liked to pretend he knew Chuck Norris and martial arts. He later went on to act alongside Roy Scheider in that show "SeaQuest," auditioned for Anakin Skyweiner in Star Wars Episode II Show Me The Clones, and then he killed himself.

They've got an okay-to-somewhat-annoying cast to play the growed-up versions our '80s middle-aged campers. They've got the sexually-repressed-and-possibly-latent-homosexual (Louie Anderson), the aging surfer (Tim Thomerson), the pussy hound (Richard Belzer), the black guy who you've probably never heard of (Franklyn Ajaye), and the whiny Richard Lewis type (Richard Lewis). It's a good group of talent, I guess, in small doses. They all have their moments of shit acting (Anderson: "It's our paaack. There's stuff in it.") and Richard Lewis is kinda annoying as the whiny Jewish guy who is addicted to nasal spray, or whatever.

So basically the story is Louie Anderson (stand-up comedian, former host of "Family Feud" and fan of sweets) has been getting nostalgic for the good ole days and the house that he shares with his mom is gonna be bulldozed so the fuckin Man can put a freeway through their neighborhood. So it's like the end of an era and Louie knows it. It seems like Moms is his only friend, so he's kind of a pathetic loser, I guess. So he decides to get the gang together for one last ride to recapture the youth. Well, no, that's Wild Hogs. This is The Wrong Guys, about the Cub Scouts. My bad. So then we get treated to a couple scenes that introduce us to the adult versions of the annoying kids.

We get introduced to Richard Lewis (Robin Hood: Men In Tights, Wagons East) in his office packing for the trip and agonizing out loud over what he should pack and what he shouldn't. I don't know if the "whiny Jew" stereotype holds any water, but if it does then this guy embodies it. And since Richard Lewis has pretty much played this same character in everything I've seen him in (including a "Simpsons Treehouse of Horror" episode), then maybe he really is like that. Or maybe he's the kind of comedian who just does the same shit over and over again like Rodney Dangerfield, only not funny.

Then we catch up with Richard Belzer's (Detective John fucking Munch on "Law & Order: Sport Utility Vehicle") character. He's a fashion designer who has a hard-on and calls women "baby." And then he gets punched out by some chick. I think she was his assistant or somebody. So that was kinda surprising.

I don't think it's possible that Jonathan Brandis could grow up to become Tim Thomerson (Volunteers, Who's Harry Crumb?, numerous shitty movies) with creepy surfer hair, but that's what this movie seems to want us to believe. He doesn't seem to have a job because he's living in a trailer with his ESPing girlfriend and has no problem dropping everything he's doing, jumping in his VW Microbus and driving to the old neighborhood for a childhood reunion. Well, maybe he's a surfing instructor or something Patrick Swayze might do, so he makes his own schedule. Anyway, later he does a pretty good John Wayne impression.

Last we get to meet Franklyn Ajaye (Detective 1 in The 'burbs) as the host of a radio show where he talks about lovin' and the clarinet. I guess we all knew this was coming because when it showed him earlier as a kid he was asking Louie's mom about her communist husband. Well, maybe that doesn't mean anything, but I'm gonna pretend it does.

I guess the bizarre thing about this movie is the main characters seem to be playing themselves. Louie Anderson plays Louie, Tim Thomerson is Tim, Richard Belzer is the aforementioned Belz (you can't have two Richards, apparently), Franklyn Ajaye is Franklyn, and Richard Lewis is... Richard Lewis. He even has a sign in his office that reads "Richard Lewis, D.D.S." So this is kind of a weird metaphysical comedy, I guess. I'd like to think it takes place in an alternate reality where Richard Lewis never became an unfunny stand-up comic and instead became a dentist. That Louie Anderson is living at home with his mom and still retains a creepy child-like innocence, Tim Thomerson surfs and has a psychic hippie girlfriend, Richard Belzer is a sleazy fashion designer who specializes in belts and is an unlikely sort of Lothario or Casanova, and Franklyn Ajaye is the host of a radio show where he gives romantic advice and therefore is more famous than he is now. And the best part is they were all in the Cub Scouts together, if you can wrap your fuckin brain around that. That's like if Wild Hogs represented an alternate reality of its own. Imagine if Travolta and Macy and Martin Lawrence and the Santa Clause really were friends from way back in the day. They'd be having barbecues at each others' houses and shit, kids splashing in the pool and all that. And they'd ride their motorcycles cross country and meet up with the Wrong Guys and I bet they'd get into all sorts of adventures that I don't even want to imagine, let alone masturbate to.

Or maybe they were just too lazy to come up with names for the characters.

Anyway, when all the guys are reunited and it feels so good, Louie reveals his diabolical scheme: a camping trip. Everybody is against the idea because they're old and not too hip, but when Louie shows them the mountain of gear that he rented and then guilts them about it they give in like pussies. Louie wants to finish their Cub Scout training because when they were kids they had to hike on Mount Whitehead or some fucking thing, but they got lost and had to call their mothers to find them and they never got the Arrow of Light, the "highest honor" of the Cub Scouts or whatever. So this is to prove that they're not a bunch of losers, I guess.

Meanwhile, in a parallel story line, John Goodman (Matinee, King Ralph, C.H.U.D.) has just escaped from prison with his gang, played by some guy and Ernie Hudson (Miss Congeniality, "Tornado!"). Goodman plays "Duke Earle" so you can probably figure out what song is playing during his first scene. It's a pretty good scene, too. He causes trouble at a waffle house, quietly hints that he might eat a man's face, and shoots a giant decorative pancake. Since he's got the FBI on his ass he decides that they should hide out in a cabin on Mount Whitehead, where he spent his childhood summers. This of course leads to confusion and mayhem. Duke is always paranoid that Sector 7 of the FBI is on to him, so when our heroes put up a flag at their campsite that has a big fucking 7 on it (for Den 7. It's a Cub Scout thing), he's convinced that the feds have found him, so he's gonna have to shoot the fuck out of them with the apparently endless supply of guns he has in his trunk. But he's got... the Wrong Guys.

And in a parallel parallel story line, there are the childhood bullies who bullied the Wrong Guys when they were children. Now they're old and played by some dude and Brion James (numerous assholes in numerous eighties movies). They're brothers and they laugh a lot and get drunk and get into fights with a squirrel puppet. They decide to drop everything they are doing (nothing) and go up into the woods to torment our main characters. Predictably, these guys aren't all bad and you know that by the end they are going to be best buds with the Wrong Guys and get to be Cub Scouts again (they got kicked out of Den 7 for being douche bags).

I guess there really is no point in me writing further on this movie. I spent too much time writing about nothing when I should have been giving you some idea of what the fuck this movie is about. I really dropped the ball on this one and for what? It's not like you're going to read this shit and it's not very informative or interesting. But rest assured that by the time this movie is over there will have been scenes of clarinet-playing by the campfire, a mishap with a sleeping pill leading to a case of mistaken death, an explosion, Belz and Tim getting cornered in a sauna by the bullies' wives (one of which is played by a man) leading to them dressing in frilly robes, an engine getting stolen, Tim's apparent death as he surfs over a waterfall and no one seems too broken up about it, John Goodman tied up and later freed by the squirrel puppet, Tim (having not apparently died) using a magic pendant on a pay phone to call their mothers to come to save the day, reward money so Louie can buy a new house for his mom, and a ceremony where they all get their Arrow of Light pins for going the distance.

This isn't a great movie. It's kinda slow in parts and there aren't a whole lot of laughs, but there's nothing really cringe-worthy about it either. Except those goddamn fuckin kids. But its heart is in the right place, it's a good way to kill 83 minutes and you won't feel soiled afterwards. Plus, the scene where they talk about the Fizzies was pretty funny, with Tim Thomerson laughing and saying "Fizzies."

YEsssssssssssssssss!!! It certainly did!!!! One of my favourite scenes, the business woman's special at the restaurant *hello Dale*. Also when they get that fancy car to drive to their reunion. They are raring to go, music blaring in the car, it konks out, twice. Kills me every time. Never seems to get old.

I can't make myself read all the replies, so I'm sorry if this has been covered.
But I, a 28-year-old, college-education, professional male with a mortgage, wife, and child, like both Princess Diaries movies.

I don't know why, maybe its just Anne Hathaway, but dammit, I can't help it.

mog wrote:I can't make myself read all the replies, so I'm sorry if this has been covered.But I, a 28-year-old, college-education, professional male with a mortgage, wife, and child, like both Princess Diaries movies.

I don't know why, maybe its just Anne Hathaway, but dammit, I can't help it.

I've only seen the first Princess Diary movie. I thought it was very cute, had alot of funny bits too.

I'm with Travis, I don't really get how you can be embarassed to like a movie.

One time I read this annoying article on the Entertainment Weekly website where this guy blathered on about how owning DVDs is ALF and we should just go rent shit when we feel like seeing it again, to which he had a bit of point. He mentioned that he bought the old Rollerball on DVD several years ago and had maybe watched it once, meaning that it would've been cheaper to pay $5 dollars to rent it than $12 to own it. Okay, I see that point.

Then this douche went on to talk about how he bought the Criterion DVD of Seven Samurai and never watches it because "it's four hours in B&W and Japanese" and he just owns it because he's a film writer and his hip friends would think less of him if he didn't proudly display this classic on his shelf. I guess four hours is a lot of time to set aside when you're an important EW writer who could be using that time to reach a meaningful conclusion on the ethics of the grey cotton stretchy pants Lindsay Lohan was wearing when a paparazzi you hired took a photo of her on her way to Starbucks. But I don't see how a movie being in black and white or Japanese makes it any more time consuming to watch than colour films in English.

And if you write for EW are really a respectable film writer with an acedemic reputation to protect? Do you really need that film studies degree when you're calling Shrek 7 "a fun family flick" and deciding on the appropriate number of stars or thumbs up or smiley faces or Kelly Clarksons to attribute to its cinematic quality?

Anyway, when people come over to my place they frequently browse through my collection of DVDs and maybe they're trying to reach a conclusion about what kind of man I am, in which case my DVD of Josie and the Pussycats tells them all they need to know, or maybe they're just looking for shit they can borrow. Fuck me if I care.

Anyway, when people come over to my place they frequently browse through my collection of DVDs and maybe they're trying to reach a conclusion about what kind of man I am, in which case my DVD of Josie and the Pussycats tells them all they need to know, or maybe they're just looking for shit they can borrow. Fuck me if I care.

Replace "Josie and the Pussycats" with "Dirty Dancing" or "Pearl Harbor" and it is the same thing over at my place.....

Anyway, when people come over to my place they frequently browse through my collection of DVDs and maybe they're trying to reach a conclusion about what kind of man I am, in which case my DVD of Josie and the Pussycats tells them all they need to know, or maybe they're just looking for shit they can borrow. Fuck me if I care.

Replace "Josie and the Pussycats" with "Dirty Dancing" or "Pearl Harbor" and it is the same thing over at my place.....